How can I create an Abandoned Cart automation ?

It is no secret that 67.45% of online shopping carts get abandoned before a sale is completed. According to the same survey 56% of those carts get abandoned due to high delivery charges! Wouldn't you want to be able to reach out to your customers and offer free delivery if that would get them to complete their purchases?

Moosend allows you to do this and more using cart abandonment emails.

Granted, not all of your site visitors who abandon their cart can be persuaded to move ahead with a purchase; some of them may have never had the intention of buying to begin with! But for those customers who abandoned their carts without meaning to do so (e.g. due to a website crash, or a site time-out) the minimal effort of creating a cart abandonment automation will surely work to your benefit as it's remarkable how effective these emails can be: nearly half of all abandoned cart emails are opened and over a third of clicks lead to purchases back on site.

As soon as one of your customers adds an item to their cart you should be ready to send them a compelling reminder of the items they've abandoned, in case they fail to go through with their purchase. Abandoned cart emails are easy to create and succeed in pulling back reluctant customers, so make sure yours gets triggered whenever a customer adds an item to their cart.

1. Click on the Select your trigger area.

The "Select a Trigger" pop-up window appears showcasing the available triggers.

2. Select the Website Engagement option from the drop-down menu, located on the top of the "Select a Trigger" pop-up window.

All available triggers are displayed on the "Select a Trigger" window by default, so filtering the different types of triggers showcased helps you make a quicker choice by focusing on what is relevant to the occasion. Right now we are looking for triggers that occur on your website:

When someone browses any page

When someone browses a specific page

When someone purchases any product

When someone purchases a specific product

When someone adds any product to their cart

When someone adds a specific product to their cart

3. Click on the dots located on the pop-up window to move to the next page of available triggers.

4. Choose the When someone adds any product to their cart option.

The window that appears begs the question: "Do you want this trigger to only trigger once?" to which you can answer either Yes or No.

5. Select the No - Trigger every time someone adds a product option from the drop-down menu.

You want your abandoned cart automation to get triggered every time a user drops items in their cart, not just the first time.

6. Click on the Save button.

B. Giving your users some time to purchase

The trigger has been set. When a customer adds an item to their cart it will initiate the automation sequence, but you can't just have your automation act on it by immediately sending them an email! You need to give your customers some time to go through with the purchase, or better yet, give them time to browse your site for other items to add to their cart and subsequently buy. This is why the Wait a specific time interval condition is super useful. By utilizing it you can give your customers plenty of time to make a purchase before proceeding on with the automation.

1. Click on the + symbol below your starting trigger.

A pop-up appears with two tabs, the "Conditional / Control Steps" tab and the "Actions" tab. You'll find yourself at the "Conditional / Control Steps" tab by default, which is the one we're looking for.

2. Click on the Wait a specific time interval option.

3. Fill-in the time duration you want to wait until the next step in your automation takes place, and then select the measurement of time you want to use from the ones available in the drop-down menu.

Your options are simple:

minutes

hours

days

Ideally you should go for 45 minutes as an optimum waiting time. This should give your customers enough time to browse your site for other items they want to buy and move forward with the purchase. If after 45 minutes they haven't purchased anything, they probably need a reminder!

4. Click on the Save button.

C. Checking if a purchase was made

Now that your customers have had adequate time to buy any items they added to their cart, let's split them up, based on whether they did purchase any items or not.

1. Click on the + symbol below your Control Step.

The pop-up window with the "Conditional / Control Steps" tab and the "Actions" tab appears.

2. Click on the Filter contacts option.

3. Click on the Add a condition button.

4. Select the Purchased a Product option from the first drop-down menu.

The drop-down menu contains all the Custom Fields available in your account. For the purposes of your abandoned cart automation we need to figure out whether the customer has made a purchase or not so the Purchased a Product option is the ideal choice.

5. Select the is true option from the second drop-down menu.

Setting the logic function this way means that filter create a division based on the following question "Did the customer make a purchase, yes or no?"

6. Click on the time symbol, located on the right side of the Filter contacts window.

You now have extra options that help you define a time span in which the condition we're setting has taken place. This way we can make a filter that separates the customers who recently purchased something from the one's who haven't.

7. Fill-in the time to 45 and select the minutes measurement from the drop-down menu.

Our filter is ready: your customers added an item in their cart and had 45 minutes to move ahead with a purchase. The filter separates the ones who actually bought something during this time from the ones who didn't by asking the question "Did the customer make a purchase in the last 45 minutes, yes or no?"

8. Click on the Save button.

D. Sending an email to the right people

Your filter separates anyone who has added something to their cart in the past 45 minutes into two sections: under Yes you'll find the people who added something to their cart and made a purchase in the last 45 minutes, whereas under No are the people who added something to their cart 45 minutes ago but purchased nothing during this time; those are the one's you need to nudge and get them to purchase!

1. Click on the + symbol below the No condition.

2. Choose the Actions tab.

3. Click on the Then send email campaign option.

4. Fill-in the Subject of the email you're going to send.

Make sure it's something relevant to the fact that they abandoned their cart.

You need to have a readily available design to use here, but in case you haven't made one you can always design one using the Moosend Editor and come back and add it afterwards. The available task list will show you that this step hasn't been completed yet!

7. Set the number of emails sent by this action per day to Unlimited.

You want to make sure that whenever someone abandons something in their cart they'll receive an email from you!

8. Click on the Save button.

Keep in mind that if you want to choose another action instead you can always click on Action List button to go back and check your options.

This is a simple way to create a straightforward abandoned cart automation on your own; you can always add more steps or do things differently if you feel like it. For instance you could've chosen to send a discount as a thank you to the people who purchased a product by adding an action under the Yes side of your flow. Keep in mind that the Abandoned Cart is available, along other popular automations, as a ready-made Recipe for you to get inspired by and use as a starting point for your own automations.